


Sign of the Times

by phyripo



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Mentions Cannibalism, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-25 13:03:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7533766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phyripo/pseuds/phyripo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the three Cooper siblings return from a camping trip in the secluded mountains near their home, they are shocked to find the town abandoned, every connection to the outside world severed.</p><p>None of them realise it's the end of the world until Logan gets sick, and they are forced to leave their eerie sanctuary to find a hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sign of the Times

**Author's Note:**

> A gift in aphgenficexchange on tumblr, for [kuzeykirkland](http://kuzeykirkland.tumblr.com), who requested Australia, Hutt River and Wy as siblings, and a post-apocalyptic AU! I used his human names as requested, and it was... Really weird. I did call Australia David instead of Logan multiple times in the written version of this and I kept messing up Oscar and Logan. But it's all good now! I hope! (:  
> Logan is Australia, Oscar is Hutt River and Charlotte is Wy.
> 
> Was it on purpose that they all have the same vowels? :D
> 
> There are mentions of death but it's the apocalypse so you know. What did you expect.

**T** he end of the world was supposed to be grand, Logan had thought. There were supposed to be explosions, buildings collapsing and people running for their lives. The sky was supposed to go dark and the plains should turn into wastelands. If it happened in his lifetime, Logan would perhaps become Mad Max.

Instead, he came back from a camping trip with his siblings and found everything changed. A week and a half was apparently all it took for things to start falling apart.

To celebrate the last summer all three of them were together before Oscar, Logan’s younger brother, would be going to university elsewhere in Australia, they had gone into the mountains where hardly anyone ever went. Oscar had to be coaxed into the trip by Logan and Charlotte, not being too keen on spending ten days without electricity or running water, but it all turned out fine. Logan even let him drive his car as they neared their parents’ home, on the outskirts of Milawee, their small hometown.

Oscar parked the pickup carefully, even as Charlotte was leaping out, unheeding of Logan’s half-hearted protests, as she often was. They were all eager to take a nice long shower and drink something really cold, and Charlotte seemed determined to get in before her older brothers, grabbing her backpack and racing into the house. Logan and Oscar followed at a more reasonable pace, taking the midday heat into consideration.

“Hello!” Logan called, once inside. Nobody answered, but he reckoned his parents were around somewhere, maybe gardening or just lounging in the garden. They knew the three of them were coming back today, so they would probably be home. Besides, the door was unlocked and the car was parked in its usual spot.

While Charlotte was busy in the hallway, the brothers walked to the kitchen. Logan sniffed the air, scrunching his nose when a foul smell crept up his nostrils.

“Seems like something’s gone off,” Oscar mumbled, pulling the fridge open. “Oh, _g_ —” He slammed the door shut, gagging when a wave of the stench floated out from the fridge.

“ _Everything’s_ gone off,” Logan amended, patting his brother on the back as he went to open the door and the windows, holding his shirt over his nose and mouth. The food must have been in the fridge for quite a while for it to have gone so bad. Turning back, Logan could see that the little green light over the refrigerator door wasn’t on. He frowned. Was there something wrong with the electricity? Why hadn’t his parents emptied the fridge, then?

“Hey, guys,” Charlotte said, “the light in the loo doesn’t work— _What_ is that _smell_?”

No light? So, the electricity for sure.

Trying to flick on the kitchen light yielded no results. All three of them stared at the useless light bulb for a while, as if that would make it turn on. When it unsurprisingly didn’t, Logan picked up his backpack and went outside, his siblings following.

“Mum!” he called. “Dad! We’re back!”

A bird screeched somewhere, and the air shimmered silently, but no one called back.

“Okay,” he said, turning back to Oscar and Charlotte. “I guess they aren’t home.”

“Maybe,” Oscar started, scratching his chin nervously, “there’s been an emergency in town, what with the electricity, and they had to leave, to help.”

“They would have written a note,” Charlotte replied. “Or sent a message.”

“Not if they expected to be back soon. I mean, it’s obvious they’ve been... Out, for a while now.”

Logan was walking backwards, into the shadows of some tall trees, to look up at the house. There was no sign of movement anywhere, but the windows of his parents’ bedroom were open, curtains fluttering against the window screens. The flowers his mother always kept on the windowsill looked sad and crumpled. That was the most worrying to Logan. The love for nature ran in the family; no self-respecting Cooper would let their flowers look like that.

Oscar was checking his phone. He was the only one of them who had thought to bring a portable charger, so his was the only phone that still had any battery left.

“Anything?” Logan asked.

“Nothing,” Oscar replied. He was looking rather pale.

“Hey, how about we get a change of clothes and go check my place, yeah? Charlie?”

She shrugged, displaying a nonchalance Logan didn’t feel and he was willing to bet she was faking. Oscar smiled tightly.

In silence, they trudged to their rooms. Logan picked a spare shirt from a mostly empty drawer. Luckily, he still kept some clothes around in his old home. Once he was dressed, and had splashed some water on his face, he stood on the landing for a while, looking at his parents’ door. It was open a tad. Though he felt like he was intruding, he pushed it open enough to look around the room.

The bed was unmade, rumpled and empty. Logan had to breathe a sigh of relief at that, but it still left a lot of questions. The pages of the book on his mother’s nightstand were fluttering in the warm breeze.

“Logan?” Charlotte asked behind him, her voice uncharacteristically small. He took a deep breath and turned to her.

“Yeah, let’s go. Come on, sis.”

She lightly slapped his shoulder when he passed by, and he smiled. She pretended to hate when Logan and Oscar called her that, but he knew it wasn’t so bad.

The drive to Logan’s house was quiet in a heavy, unpleasant way. There were no other vehicles on the road, and the car radio had been busted for ages.

On a beautiful day like this, the beach near Logan’s house, where he volunteered as a surfing instructor when he wasn’t busy at the local veterinary clinic, should have been packed. But Logan saw no kites in the distance, no one surfing. The place was deserted.

Logan’s house was as empty as everything else they’d seen so far, everything exactly as he’d left it. There was no electricity here either, and Logan quickly started opening windows and doors, hoping to chase away the nasty smell from his own fridge.

“And now?” Oscar asked, standing in the shadow in the small garden.

“We should go into town. Maybe someone is there,” Charlotte proposed dubiously. She had plucked the flower they had found on the way home from her ponytail and was rotating it between her fingers.

“I think that’d be the best option, yeah,” Logan said.

In town, the silence was surreal. There weren’t many cars parked in the streets, and dust was swirling around on the main square. Logan was almost afraid to break the silence when they stepped out of his car, in the middle of what should be the busiest part of Milawee, a broad street with shops and restaurant on either side.

Charlotte walked up to the nearest shop and tried the door, but it didn’t budge. Logan ran a hand through his hair, and followed her example. It couldn’t be that the entirety of town had just up and left, could it? Not without any clues as to what was going on.

“Guys,” Oscar whisper-yelled across the street. He had found an unlocked door. The tobacco shop on the corner of the street, where their dad always bought his lottery tickets.

The air inside was stuffy, even though Charlotte pushed a box in front of the door to keep it from closing.

There were the postcards, depicting the beach and the mountains and Milawee’s wholly unimpressive touristic hotspots. There was a rack carrying newspapers, there was the smell of tobacco and the lottery tickets on the counter, but there were no signs of life.

“Hello?” Logan called, jumping at the sound of his own voice. No answer.

“No electricity,” Charlotte said, demonstratively turning the knob for the sunscreens behind the counter.

Something rustled behind Logan, and then Oscar was swearing under his breath, which was very unusual. Logan and Charlotte shared a look before both turning to their brother, who was frantically turning pages in a newspaper.

“What’s—” Charlotte started.

“It’s empty!” Oscar exclaimed, turning the newspaper to them. The pages were blank. “The front page is printed, and one after that, but nothing else!”

“And what does—”

Oscar shut the paper so he could read from the front page, “‘More towns to be evacuated. The Australian government has sanctioned more communities across the country to be evacuated, quarantining the residents in areas nearby to promote public health. The decision follows a... A series of deaths of Australians infected with the Java virus, and the unexpectedly rapid spread of the virus across the country.’” His hands had started to shake, and Logan felt queasy.

“‘Patients will be treated at designated hospitals, while those who are proven healthy after a two-week period of quarantine will be assigned a space in various cities. As of yet, there is no cure or vaccine for the Java virus.’ And there’s a list... A list of towns to be evacuated. Milawee is on it.”

The Java virus. It sounded familiar, had been in the news before their trip, but Logan was sure it had not claimed any lives when the three of them left home, and certainly none in Australia. It first emerged in Indonesia, but had been deemed harmless enough, aside from causing a nasty rash, fever and coughing.

“So that’s why everyone’s gone,” Charlotte said, breaking the heavy silence that had descended on the shop. Her voice was small again, as if she was going to be sick.

“Here’s, uhm...” Oscar started. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a second. “The date on this newspaper is four days ago. Six days after we left. And there’s none dated later.”

Logan briskly stepped over to the newspaper stand and pulled more empty papers out until he found one with a different date. Thinner than usual but filled, dated four days after they left.

“‘Java virus claims more Australian lives’,” he read. He scanned the accompanying article. “The virus caused the first death the day we left, in Canberra. And more soon after that...  They’re working on a vaccine... Indonesia has closed its borders. The government is thinking of doing the same thing here, and that’s also happening in New Zealand.”

It had obviously escalated so much faster than anyone would have thought, Logan realised uneasily, as he read about the global spread of the virus, which, when the newspaper was printed, had already reached Europe and South America.

“Oh god,” Oscar was saying, sliding down against the counter until he was sitting on the dusty floor. He was pushing his hands into his hair over and over, twisting the wavy strands between his fingers. Charlotte was leaning heavily on the counter, looking tired.

“And here— ‘The virus has an incubation period of one to two weeks, during which the infected exhibits minimal or no symptoms, but is already contagious. Anyone who has been in contact with a patient, human or other mammal, should therefore report to a doctor. As the Java virus is transmitted through air and bodily fluids, it is recommended to wear a facemask outside, and stay at home whenever possible.’”

“Well, at least it doesn’t turn people into zombies,” Charlotte tried thinly.

“Don’t jinx it,” Oscar mumbled into his hands.

Logan involuntarily glanced at the door, as if there _would_ be zombies rampaging through the streets when they went back out. But of course there wouldn’t be, that was ridiculous. There might be a pandemic, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

The three of them, for a complete lack of ideas about how to proceed, decided to go back to Logan’s house, staying there for a while – until people would start returning from their quarantine. It never really crossed Logan’s mind no one might return to Milawee.

The lack of electricity was inconvenient, but not too hard to overcome. Logan dug up a battery-powered radio from somewhere in his house, so they could listen to the news.

Most broadcasts consisted of lists. Evacuated towns, the number of infected people in different counties, the number of infected people in different _countries_ , the number of deaths. Logan did his best to see them as nothing more than numbers, but it still kept him up at night knowing that his parents or his friends might be hidden among the statistics. But there was no way to reach anyone, not with the mobile network down.

Oscar occupied himself by restlessly pulling weeds in Logan’s garden one day, by writing furiously the next. He was also the one tasked with making sure they had something to eat.

Charlotte had picked up her paints from home and was painting the town as it was supposed to be, bustling with people and cars and bikes. She painted the beach littered with towels and the sky filled with kites. Looking at her work made Logan’s chest feel hollow. At age fifteen, his little sister had more artistic talent than he would have in his entire life.

It was like that, peaceful if stacked with anticipation, for an eternal week of unwavering heat, and then Logan looked into the bathroom mirror to inspect what he thought might be a sunburn or even a spider bite that had been itching for days now, and he could feel the world fall to pieces around him.

He wasn’t sure if he should let Oscar and Charlotte know, but he started coughing over breakfast, and they might both have been significantly younger than him, but neither of them was stupid.

Logan was infected with the Java virus.

“You need to go to a hospital,” Oscar insisted. Logan was too shaken to do anything but agree with him. The newspaper had said there wasn’t a cure, but maybe there would be soon? He should at least try. He was supposed to be the strongest one, both physically and mentally. He was supposed to take care of his siblings. If he got sick, if he— Who would look after them, without his parents around?

And what if he had infected them? He could have been contagious the entire time they’d been together, and there was no way to be certain.

On the ninth day after their trip, the Cooper siblings piled into Logan’s pickup, having packed enough clothes and canned food for a few days or so, and set out to the nearest hospital after siphoning some fuel from one of the few cars left around town. That actually made Logan feel pretty cool, and like the main character in an adventure film, as long as he didn’t think about it too much.

It was still surreal how empty everything was. Everything seemed grander without people to fill the spaces. It was humbling, and it was terrifying.

“Look at that,” said Oscar, as Logan drove the car past the fields surrounding Milawee. “The crops are already failing.”

Nature reclaimed what was hers quickly.

The nearest hospital was in Havenbridge, another coastal town about an hour’s drive away, but Logan was speeding, so they made good time. It wasn’t like there was anyone to ticket him. As the car passed the sign proclaiming it was five kilometres to Havenbridge, something loomed in the distance, harshly illuminated by the sunrise promising yet another hot day.

“A roadblock,” Charlotte mumbled, leaning over the dashboard to peer at it.

It was, in fact, a roadblock, with a man in military dress guarding it. He motioned for Logan to stop the car, and he obliged, resisting the urge to scratch the rash on his right shoulder.

The man stepped up next to Logan’s open window, eyes hidden by dark sunglasses and a breathing mask covering his mouth and nose.

“Can I see some identification?”

As they pulled out their passports, Logan asked, “What’s going on here?”

“Havenbridge is under quarantine.” The man glanced at their passports. “You’re from Milawee; you should have been evacuated two weeks ago. Why are you three still out here?”

“We... Weren’t home,” Logan explained. “We came back and everyone had left.” He pressed his shoulder into the car seat, trying to relieve the itch. He had a headache.

“But, hey,” Oscar piped up, “was everyone from Milawee evacuated to Havenbridge? Mum and dad could be here!”

“That’s possible,” said the guard, “but there have also been—”

Logan coughed, a hacking sound that cut the guard off.

“ _Are you infected with the Java virus_?” he barked, taking a step back.

“He needs a hospital,” said Charlotte, leaning over Logan to poke her head out of the window. Sometimes, people still fell for her schoolgirl charm. Her brown hair was pushing against Logan’s face, and he spluttered.

“Absolutely not in Havenbridge! This is a safe zone. I must request that you leave immediately, all three of you.”

“That’s unfair!” Charlotte exclaimed. Her hands were resting, quite painfully, on Logan’s right thigh, and she was pushing her knees against Oscar’s. It would have been amusing two weeks ago.

“It is the way it is, Miss Cooper.”

Logan tried, “My brother and sister aren’t sick. They could be allowed—”

“No!” the guard barked, at the same time that Charlotte pulled her head back to stare at Logan incredulously and Oscar made a shocked noise.

“I’m sorry,” said the guard, “but you _have_ to leave. As far as I know, the hospital in Wildrose Valley is still open. Try there. Havenbridge is off-limits.”

Wildrose Valley was at best half a day’s drive away, and Logan was about to protest when Oscar said,

“We will go there.”

“Good,” the guard said, stepping back to his post. “Best of luck. Be careful out there, I’ve heard worrying stories.”

“We will go there?” Charlotte asked, easing back into her seat between her brothers.

“Better not to aggravate him.” Oscar looked at his hands, picking some dirt from under his fingernails. “It’s bad enough as it is.”

They sat quietly once again, while the guard was motioning at them to leave. This much silence was highly uncharacteristic of their family. When the guard started walking over, Logan raised a hand at him, started the car, turned, and drove back the way they came.

* * *

**A** t this point, Oscar thought he might have been the only one fully grasping the gravitas of the situation they were in. The world did not work the way it did Before. The word had already become capitalised in his mind.

It wasn’t that Logan and Charlotte were unaware of how the changes affected them, how this virus was throwing their lives into disarray, but Oscar thought they, Logan in particular, were overlooking the long-term effect this would have on society. This many dead, including, they’d heard, important politicians, military leaders and scientists; even when a cure or vaccine was eventually developed, life in Australia and _the world_ would not be the same.

Oscar had started checking himself for signs of the same rash that had manifested on his brother’s skin, but he seemed to be free of the virus. For now.

Logan was coughing again, the car swerving on the empty road. They were driving around Havenbridge to get to Wildrose Valley, which meant it would take far more time than it should. Charlotte was fidgeting restlessly against Oscar, and it was driving him up the wall. She should learn some _poise_.

“Logan, let me drive,” he burst out. His brother looked over at him with one watery green eye, no longer a perfect mirror of his own.

“He’s right,” Charlotte said, and Logan sighed, pulling over on the side of the road. Oscar and Charlotte tended to disagree, but he was happy she at least backed him in this.

When Oscar walked around the car, Logan was leaning against the hood, looking paler than Oscar had ever seen him and staring into the distance, eyes narrowed.

“Hey—” Oscar started, but Logan clasped his shoulder.

“What’s going on there?”

Oscar frowned, turning to see a thick column of smoke rising in the distance, between some hills. Somewhere in the vicinity of Havenbridge. He wanted to say it was a forest fire, but he knew what those looked like, and it wasn’t this.

“Let’s not find out,” he said instead, shrugging Logan off to walk to the driver’s side and take his place behind the wheel. He didn’t have his driver’s licence yet, but had been taking lessons for a while now, and had been hoping to pass the exam before he started university. His fingers tightened. Right now, he didn’t know if he would ever make uni at all. If there would be a uni _left_ to go to when all was said and done.

He drove, and watched the fuel metre dip ever lower as they neared Wildrose Valley. They should be able to get there by nightfall at this speed.

But what if they wouldn’t allow Logan in there either? The nearest city then would be across the mountains, and who knew how fast the virus would catch up with Logan. How long he...

“Stop swerving!” Charlotte said. “You’re no better than he was!”

She was agitated, and Oscar couldn’t even blame her. He kept his eyes on the road from there on out. The smoke left his vision, giving way to a red dusk as the hills became higher and steeper. Still, there was no one but them, as if they were the only people left in the country.

By the time they started to get hungry enough to stop for dinner, they had just passed a sign proclaiming it was ten kilometres to Wildrose Valley, and they settled at the foot of a hill to eat.

“If they won’t let us in,” Logan started, and then, quickly, when Charlotte opened her mouth, undoubtedly to protest the very notion, “ _if_ they won’t let us in, we go back home. It’s not worth it to keep going.”

“You’re saying _your life_ isn’t worth a risk!” Charlotte yelled. “We know what this – this Java virus does!”

“Then I should go, but there’s no reason to put both of you in danger with me.”

“I can’t _believe_ you!”

“Charlie...”

She got up abruptly, stalking around the car so they couldn’t see her anymore. Logan sighed, but made no move to follow her. Charlotte had fits of anger sometimes, and Oscar was the only family member who still wasn’t sure how to deal with them.

“She was right,” he mumbled, looking down at his dinner of toast and pickles. They had some spaghetti too, even canned tomato paste, but not enough water to cook it in. “We aren’t leaving anyone. Mum and dad might be... Not around, but I’m sure they’d want us to stick together.”

 _Not around_. He was afraid to even think about the possibility he might not see his parents again. If they had not been able to take their own car when Milawee was evacuated, what did that say about their health? Had Logan contracted the virus from one of them? Would they ever have the chance to find out?

“I guess you have a point,” Logan sighed. Him sighing this much was completely against everything Oscar knew about the steady, upbeat person that was his brother. It unnerved him, even more so than the rash and the coughing. “I may have infected both of you.”

“I know. Nothing we can change about that.”

There were facemasks packed – Oscar suspected Charlotte had nicked them from a store in Milawee – but they had not been used thus far. If they were infected, they were infected. If they weren’t, they would be, because they couldn’t avoid Logan without splitting from him.

That was two times Oscar had agreed with his little sister on something today. Might well be a record.

“We should go,” Logan said, heaving himself up. “I’ll go get Charlie.”

While he went and did just that, Oscar packed their things into the pickup and wondered what they would find in Wildrose Valley, and what exactly the ‘worrying stories’ were the guard by Havenbridge had heard.

But then Charlotte and Logan were coming over, apparently having made up already, which was unusual since they were both stubborn as mules, and they were ready to go again.

The closer they came to Wildrose Valley, the more signs of life started to pop up along the road. Or – _signs of life_ was putting it rather optimistically. There were cars, parked haphazardly along the side of the road, in the yellow grass, or, increasingly, in the middle of the road. There didn’t seem to be a soul alive among the vehicles. Oscar’s hands were clammy on the steering wheel, and he caught himself gritting his teeth.

As night fell, the amount of cars on the road grew to the point where Oscar was swerving continuously to avoid collisions. His mind was screaming at him to turn around. There was nothing blocking the way _out_ of Wildrose Valley, and this obviously wasn’t good.

In the moonlight, the cars looked nearly skeletal, like remains of some long-forgotten society.

Finally, Charlotte asked, “What happened here?”

“Maybe they couldn’t handle all the cars in the city,” Logan proposed, voice tight.

“I have to stop,” Oscar said.

“Are you feeling alright? We could turn—”

“No! No, I’m fine.” No turning back now that they were so close. The slightest chance that they could get Logan admitted at a hospital was enough to go on, against every instinct. “I just can’t drive here. With all the... Everything on the road, you know.”

“Right.”

Walking through the metal forest was worse than driving. Oscar’s reflection in shiny cars stared back at him with a pale face. He tried to relax his muscles, but just looked constipated. He wanted to tell Charlotte, who’d undoubtedly get a laugh out of his expression – _would have gotten_ a laugh. Before. The humour appeared to have been sucked out of the very air, leaving more place for dread and fear.

“Guys?” Charlotte, standing rigid next to a red BMW, clutching her paint-splattered jeans. “I don’t want to go there.”

“What’s—” Oscar started, stepping up next to her, but the rest of the sentence got stuck in his throat and took his breath, because inside the BMW was a person, still as death, resting in the passenger seat.

Charlotte was shaking, and actually leant into Oscar when he wrapped an arm around her, laying it on top of her backpack.

“He’s _dead_ ,” she whispered. Oscar squeezed her tighter. Logan was coughing a few paces away, and did not seem to have noticed what was going on.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the person – the _body_ – in the car. His skin was covered in the rash, a large patch of hair gone where it had covered his skull, like it’d eaten away at him. Oscar fought the urge to gag, then abruptly pulled Charlotte away from the gruesome scene. She didn’t protest being manhandled. Logan was now panting, leaning against a car.

“We should turn back,” Charlotte told him.

“Why? We’re so close.” Logan looked up, raising his eyebrows at Oscar’s arm still around his sister’s shoulders. He didn’t let go of her, and she made no move to squirm away as she usually would.

“It’s... Something’s not right,” she said. Oscar nodded. His stomach turned again – how many other people were trapped in cars, too sick to go out, and had died like that?

“I’m still going,” Logan insisted, already hobbling away. The stubborn bloody idiot.

Charlotte was pulling out from underneath Oscar’s arm to go after Logan, and he sighed deeply. The stubborn thing ran in the family.

Eventually, the three of them reached a roadblock similar to the one near Havenbridge, albeit closer to the city. No one had spoken a word, and Logan and Charlotte wore eerily similar grim faces. This roadblock was unguarded.

Following the signs, they found the hospital quickly, but it was dark behind its many windows, there was no movement in the lobby – and if Oscar thought the fridge at home had smelled bad, the stench that hit him when Logan struggled a door open was enough to change his mind about that.

“Shit,” Logan breathed, clasping a hand over his nose and mouth.

“Don’t go in there!” Charlotte hissed. Once again, Oscar had to agree with her. He couldn’t even _think_ about what was causing that smell in there, even though, if he were honest, he knew. Decay. Like the time a mouse died in the attic and no one could reach it, amplified by a thousand.

“Logan!” he tried, but his brother was unheeding. Oscar and Charlotte shared a look, then bolted after him, ready to pull him out, even as Oscar’s eyes started to water and he felt his stomach lurch. They should have taken the facemasks. Then again, no one could have been prepared for this.

People – _bodies_ – littered the lobby, some lain on bedrolls or stretchers, some on the ground, all of them heavily covered in rash like the man in the car.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Logan said now. His voice cracked. “This can’t— It’s not even been a _month_.”

It was like something out of a horror film. Oscar clamped both his hands over his face and turned, sprinting back to the door and bursting into the silent night with tears running down his cheeks. It had all become tangible. And Logan was sick. He could become like that, still and empty – Oscar’s stomach lurched again, and he was throwing up, falling to his knees on the asphalt.

He never noticed his siblings coming outside, but Charlotte was offering him a bottle of water with a shaky hand and Logan was leaning on his backpack in a reassuring way.

They stayed like that for a long while as the wind rushed through the trees around them, drawing strength from each other’s presence in a way they’d never consciously done Before, until Oscar’s stomach settled enough for him to stand up.

Hoisting his backpack up, he said, “There’s nothing here for us. We ought to go home.”

Logan and Charlotte agreed, so they started the slow trek back through the ghost town that Wildrose Valley had become. Everyone must have left – every healthy person, that is, and Oscar had the uneasy suspicion there hadn’t been many of those left. It was still a mystery to him why he and Charlotte appeared to be unaffected by the virus.

Less than a month, Logan was right. It had been less than a month, and everything had changed so much. Maybe this was what the end of the world felt like.

The siblings reached the road where they had left the car. Charlotte was glancing over her shoulder, as if she expected to see the ghosts of the people in the hospital chasing them out of the city. Logan was up front, struggling along as quickly as he could. His breath was heavy.

So heavy, in fact, that they almost missed the dragging footsteps coming their way. It was almost supernatural to hear something besides themselves and the small animals around them, hiding along the road. They all stopped abruptly, standing close together without knowing why.

Charlotte pointed. They could see feet shuffling along underneath a car. Sneakers, ratty jeans.

Then—

“Peter?” Charlotte whisper-yelled, when a small figure emerged in the moonlight, blond hair nearly white.

“Charlie?”

“Yeah,” she said, hardly more than a breath. “Peter, what are you _doing_ here?”

Oscar recognised him, then. He was from the next town over and went to school with Charlotte, and Oscar and Logan had teased her quite a bit over the crush he seemed to have on her when they were younger. He wasn’t sure if they were still friends, but Oscar knew he’d be happy to see even the most annoying of his high school peers at the moment, so it didn’t even matter.

“I’m...” Peter seemed to falter. “I’m with my parents, and my brother. We’re going east to find a safe place.” His smile was obviously fake. It was unnerving. Oscar dug his nails into his palms, trying to stop his stomach from making him vomit again at the thought of what might have happened to Peter’s parents or brother, because they obviously weren’t around. The boy was by himself.

“You could come along,” Peter was saying, his smile still wide.

Charlotte took a step back to her brothers. “No, thanks. We’re going home.”

Peter’s smile fell, leaving his face tired and drawn. His eyes were too wide, Oscar thought.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Sorry, Peter,” Charlotte replied. “Maybe you can come with us instead.”

Peter went rigid with panic. “No, I’m not going back!”

“Oh.” Charlotte worried at her lip. Logan was wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Do you want something to eat, maybe?”

“We have enough,” he said, already withdrawing. Charlotte shook next to Oscar.

They stared at Peter’s narrow, retreating back until he disappeared between the cars, and then she started to cry, clutching on to Logan’s shirt and hiding her face in his chest.

“That wasn’t him at all,” she hiccupped, while Logan tried to soothe her by rubbing circles on her back. The rash had already reached his wrist.

“Everything’s changed, yeah?” he croaked. “He’s been through it all, unlike us. Maybe he’s changed along with the world.”

For them, it had been abrupt; suddenly, Milawee was empty and the world was in disarray. For Peter, and everyone else, there would have been a slow descent into this madness. Peter might have seen his family suffer. Oscar wasn’t sure how he would have dealt with maybe seeing his mum or dad decline, with being forced out of Milawee. At least now, they could decide their own path, wherever that may be going, and for however long it would last.

“Let’s go home,” he just said, touching his sister’s hair briefly.

They found the pickup and Oscar drove it back over the hill so they couldn’t see the dark, silent skyline of Wildrose Valley. They didn’t see Peter anymore.

Sleep was hard to find. Every time he closed his eyes, Oscar would see the dead stare of the man in the car, the torn skin of the people in the hospital. They must have been in so much pain. Even as Logan’s laboured breath evened out and Charlotte started to snore, he tossed and turned, thoughts running at full speed.

His mum or dad could have been in that hospital. In a car even, waiting for someone to find help that would never come. He didn’t want to think about those things, but he always worried too much. He was unlike Logan in that aspect. His brother was every bit the optimist. Charlotte, he feared, had started taking after Oscar during the past years. She used to be a wild, rebellious girl, and still loved to heckle him, play stupid pranks with her friends, but Oscar also knew she was worried about her future.

Charlotte wanted to paint, but wasn’t sure if she would be good enough to make it in the harsh art world. He had no doubt, however, that she would get her way in the end.

Oscar himself wanted most of all to just tend to his garden, bake and read and sew, but he was going... Would have been going to study economics. He didn’t have the kind of courage his sister had, he thought sometimes.

His eyes were heavy. Maybe he’d be able to sleep now, if he just thought about school or his garden or something like that. Or his friends... Were they all right? Had they ended up like Peter, or were they in Havenbridge? Were they somewhere in Wildrose Valley?

Oscar groaned, turning over again. Charlotte mumbled something in her sleep. He sighed.

Things wouldn’t go back to normal for a long while, if ever, and they had to learn to live with that.

With that thought, Oscar finally fell into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

 

 **L** ogan actually looked all right when he was sleeping Charlotte thought. He may not have his usual tan, but he wasn’t coughing, at least, and his face was as relaxed as it mostly was. His hair covered the rash that had reached his jaw.

Oscar looked vaguely like a Muppet where he was lying down with his hair stuck to his cheek. Charlotte huffed a laugh. He wouldn’t like to hear that.

Searching through her backpack, she found her sketchbook and a pencil, and made a rough sketch of her brothers, alongside a shaky one of Peter she’d drawn yesterday evening while they were leaving Wildrose Valley. At least she still had that, still had the ability to make art.

Once Oscar and Logan had woken, they were back on the road. Back to Milawee. And then? Charlotte didn’t know what to expect. They could hold out for a while without electricity, and eventually the pandemic would be over, wouldn’t it? One way or another? People would start going home?

So many questions only the future could answer.

There was a more acute problem to worry about now; the car was nearly out of fuel. The pumps were all out of order, and they hadn’t thought to bring gas to refuel, since they only expected to go to Havenbridge, not all the way to Wildrose Valley and back.

“There’s always more in there than it says,” Logan said when Oscar expressed his worries about the fuel metre being in the red area.

“We could steal a car,” Charlotte proposed, only half as a joke.

“I wouldn’t know how,” Logan replied seriously.

Oscar laughed a little hysterically. He was always the most risk-averse out of the three of them.

The pickup eventually refused to go on about fifteen kilometres out of Milawee, in the middle of an empty pasture. Or, well, empty – Charlotte was quite sure the animals that inhabited this place were lying further down the slope. Dead. The Java virus infected mammals, she recalled. That might mean food would become a problem, especially since the farmland was being left unirrigated now that it needed water the most.

“So now we walk, nah?” Logan said flippantly, like he wasn’t wincing in pain with every step he took and running a fever so high he could barely see straight.

Still, there was no other option as far as Charlotte could see, so she and Oscar let Logan lean on them and surreptitiously put some things from his backpack in their own bags.

It was a long, boring trek though the hills and the heat, and slow-going. By mid-afternoon, they’d only made it over one hill. They ate the last of their crackers, confident enough that they would be back in Milawee come evening so they’d be able to cook the spaghetti, maybe pick some tomatoes from the garden.

Logan staggered when he stood, and his hair was falling over his forehead while it was normally slicked back at least partially. He had wild hair, like Charlotte herself. At least it covered some of the rash.

They passed the ten-kilometres-to-Milawee sign, the seven-kilometres-to-Milawee sign. They rested again. Oscar complained about his feet hurting, and it was a relief to hear him complain about something stupid like that. It was still hot, but clouds were amassing on the horizon, promising rain, maybe thunderstorms. That would be nice.

“Hey, look at that,” Oscar said, later, when they were nearing the five-kilometres-to-Milawee sign.

Smoke rising up from the direction of the town, heavy and grey against the stark blue sky. Charlotte frowned.

“You reckon something’s on fire?” she asked. “I mean, a house or something?”

“Maybe,” Oscar replied. “Not impossible, with this weather.” He hoisted Logan’s arm up around his shoulder.

“Maybe it’s the fields,” Logan croaked.

“Maybe,” Oscar said again. “We should go on.”

He was proving himself more resilient than Charlotte would have previously given him credit for.

The grass was brown and yellow and the sky turning red when they finally reached the welcome-to-Milawee sign, with its garish parasol and faded turquoise sea. The sea had never been that colour around here, Charlotte was certain. Still, it felt like coming home.

The smoke was coming from the south side of town, somewhere near the coast. By unspoken agreement, the three of them walked in the opposite direction, to their parents’ house.

They were just passing the house of one of Oscar’s friends when Oscar stopped abruptly, almost causing Logan and Charlotte to fall over.

“ _What_?” she hissed, feeling tired, hungry and irritable. They were almost there, what the hell was Oscar going to complain about this time?

“Ssh,” he said, holding a hand up and listening intently, ear to the wind. “I heard something.”

“Prob’bly an animal,” Logan said unclearly. Oscar shook his head.

Charlotte was about to say something else when she heard it too. A shout, definitely human, from the centre of town.

“People,” Logan whispered. “We should go check ‘em out, nah?”

Charlotte shared a look with Oscar.

“Let’s just get home first,” she said.

“But—”

“Come on,” Oscar interjected. “She’s right.”

It was still strange to hear him say that.

At home, Charlotte at last felt like she could breathe again. The absence of their parents was tangible, but it didn’t press as heavy as the emptiness outside. It was bearable, especially since she wasn’t alone. She might not always have seen eye-to-eye with Oscar and Logan, but they were her brothers, and she cared about both of them.

Logan fell asleep after he ate some spaghetti, leaving Oscar and Charlotte to sit in the backyard, watching the last sunrays disappear behind the horizon, taking the red glow of the clouds with them. The air was heavy and there was a warm wind blowing.

“Storm’s coming,” Oscar mumbled. He was turning his phone over between his fingers. It had given up the ghost even before they left for Havenbridge, but he carried it with him like a token of sorts.

“It’d be good to have some rain,” Charlotte said.

“Charlie... Should we go and see who those people in town are?”

She twisted her ponytail around her fingers. “I don’t want to just leave Logan alone.”

“It’s not like we can do much for him,” Oscar said softly. Charlotte closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. That was true, and she hated the thought. Oscar continued, “We’ll lock the doors so no one will get in, write a note. It’ll be an hour at most.”

A quip about how adventurous Oscar had become all of a sudden didn’t make it to her lips, and she just nodded. Logan was 24, he’d be able to look after himself for a little while, wouldn’t he?

Oscar wrote the note, Charlotte locked the doors and closed the windows for good measure, and they forced their sore feet to carry them into Milawee.

They crept, for no discernible reason, staying in the darkest shadows as if they were hunters looking for prey.

A crash of breaking glass from the main street. They both jumped, then glanced at each other and followed the noise.

Figures, human shapes in the sparse moonlight shining through the dark clouds. They were carrying torches, the artificial light harsh in the night.

“Nothing in here,” one of them called. He – probably he – was climbing out of a broken window down the street. He was wearing a facemask.

Charlotte clenched her jaw. They were _looting_. They were _looting_ her town. She knew who lived there, she’d visited that house. They had _no right_ to waltz into Milawee like it belonged to them.

She was about to leap out, against her better judgement, when a soft curse from her brother caught her attention.

“What— Oh, god.”

The looters had found someone. Charlotte couldn’t see who it was, but they were dragged out of a house carelessly, limbs dangling and dragging, and the other looters hooted like it was a prize.

“Put her on the fire,” said a female voice.

The fire? The _smoke_. They were burning bodies they found. Charlotte’s stomach turned. It was, in itself, a good way to stop the disease from spreading, but the way they were handling the body...

“I kinda hope we’re gonna find some hiding squatters like in Goldcrest,” said the man carrying the dead woman. She was covered in the rash, completely unrecognisable. Charlotte supposed that was for the best. She might have been one of her teachers, the mother of one of her friends.

“Yeah, it’d sure be nice to have a decent meal,” said the man’s companion.

When the words sank in – _someone hiding_ equals a _decent meal_ – Charlotte gagged. They couldn’t be serious!  Was the world so far gone already?

Oscar was shaking like a leaf.

“You gotta wonder,” said the first man, “if we’re immune anyway, why don’t we eat this one?”

Charlotte threw up.

“We have to get out of here,” Oscar whispered, desperately dragging at her arm, voice shaking.

She couldn’t follow him fast enough.

It was the end of the world, she realised then. This was the sort of thing people made films about. It wasn’t even the virus, per se – humanity would destroy itself in the face of its own extinction. This was the apocalypse no one expected, the dawn of a new time, whatever the survivors would be calling it in the distant future, and they were in the middle of it. Had been all along, and she hadn’t even realised.

Somehow, she and Oscar had arrived back home. Logan was sleeping on the couch still, but he sat up when they arrived, looking vaguely angry until he saw their faces.

“What’s going—”

“We have – to leave,” Oscar panted, “now.” His usually perfect hair was wild.

Charlotte rinsed her mouth, took a mint, but the memory alone was enough to make her want to throw up again. In not even a month, how could civilised people become so vile? Was it a thing that was hidden in everyone? Might she have become one of the looters?

Had that man said Goldcrest? That was where Peter lived. She gagged again.

“Why do we have to—” Logan started to ask.

“It doesn’t matter!” Charlotte yelled, tears springing up in her eyes. “We have to go! It’s not safe!”

“Charlie—”

“Please don’t ask,” Oscar whispered. He was still shaking. Charlotte tried to breathe evenly, unclenching her fingers.

Logan looked between the two of them with watery eyes, and then nodded. There was rash on his forehead, half his eyebrow gone with the healthy skin.

“Where are we going?” he asked instead. Charlotte looked at Oscar, who frowned. They hadn’t thought of that yet.

Wait. “The mountains,” she said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “Where we camped. No one will come there. We’ll be safe.”

“You’re a genius,” Oscar breathed.

“I can’t,” Logan said. “I can’t walk up that mountain.”

“We’ll carry you. You’re coming no matter what.”

“Don’t be—” he coughed “—don’t be ridiculous, Oscar.”

“We will carry you,” Charlotte said. She knew they would if need be.

“Fine,” Logan sighed.

“We’re going as soon as we’re packed,” Oscar told them. “We’ll take the car, it should get us far enough.”

Packing was hectic, but they had to be certain they wouldn’t need to come back for missing supplies. Charlotte was afraid to think how long they would have to spend in the mountains. She got her dad’s fishing rod and rifle from the shed, following Logan’s instructions when taking ammunition. It started to rain as she came back inside, finally. Oscar packed a sewing kit, and all the tents they could find, which was a surprisingly large amount.

They took the valuable items from the safe, but left the money. There would be no need for that for a while.

When they were ready to go at last, the morning was dawning and the rain had turned to a steady drizzle. Logan had fallen asleep in the backseat of the SUV. He was clammy and pale, and the rash seemed to have spread even more during the past few hours. They didn’t mention any of that.

“Goodbye, home,” Oscar said, as Charlotte made a very rough sketch of the house, sitting in the car.

“Bye,” she whispered, and then they were off.

Oscar looked as hollow as she felt, staring blankly at the road ahead while the rain cleared up.

Logan woke when Oscar parked on top of a hill like they had when they went camping, what seemed like years ago.

“Here we are,” he said, not letting go of the steering wheel. His knuckles were white.

It would take more than one trip to get everything they packed to the camping spot, but that was fine. The weather had cleared, and Charlotte was feeling a little better, if tired. Logan, for the first time in a while, was the liveliest out of them. He belonged here, in nature. It was his place.

The car was parked out of sight, and though the rocks were steep at some points, they knew the way by now. They were the only ones who had ever come here. They would be safe.

The biggest challenge was getting Logan up the mountain. Oscar and Charlotte had to push and pull at their brother and his backpack, and though he was livelier than yesterday, he was weakened.

“Hey, listen,” he said, when they were resting for the fifth time, his voice hoarse, “I want to say something, yeah?”

“Yeah?” Oscar asked. Charlotte tilted her head.

“I love you,” Logan said. “Both of you. I want you to stick together. Take care of each other.”

“Logan—”

“Let me talk, Charlie. You’re both smart. You’ll be fine without me, without mum and dad, as long as you’re together.”

This wasn’t _happening_. He wasn’t giving them this speech. Logan was far too young to go, and they’d come this far. Charlotte gritted her teeth.

“Promise me, please. Stay together. Tell mum and dad I love them if you see them.”

 _If_.

“I love you both,” he repeated, smiling with watery eyes.

“Love you too,” Oscar mumbled, biting his lip.

“Me too,” Charlotte said. “You tell mum and dad that yourself!”

Neither of her brothers said anything. She knew her hope was far-fetched, but she was _trying_.

“Let’s just go on,” she said, rising to her feet.

Late in the afternoon, they reached their camping space, a beautiful secluded spot between the trees, from where they could look out over the valley and had access to a clear, cold river. The sun was shining through the foliage, painting everything green, and Charlotte couldn’t help but smile. They had made it.

“I’ll unpack these things,” Logan said, sitting down heavily and opening Charlotte’s bag with unsteady fingers. They’d have to take the bags down again later. Logan’s hands were red. The rash had eaten its way to his ear and up his head, creating large gaps in his hair. He looked far too much like the non-patients in Wildrose Valley to Charlotte’s liking. He must be in so much pain, yet kept up his steady presence.

Were she and Oscar immune, perhaps, like that looter had claimed to be? If so, why wasn’t Logan? It was unfair and cruel.

She left him to his unpacking and glancing around at the forest in something like wonder. It really was a beautiful place.

Charlotte found Oscar on a rock overlooking the valley. She could see the smoke over Milawee, still strong despite the rain, the glistening cars near Wildrose Valley, the endless sea stretching out to the horizon.

She had never quite understood the comments tourists from out of the country, especially from Europe, tended to make about the _magnitude_ or the _power_ of the Australian landscape – to her, everything was familiar, from the beach to these very mountains – but she thought she understood better now. They were so small. Even if this virus killed everyone, every human being on the planet, nature would live on, _thrive_ even.

However, it _wouldn’t_ kill everyone, she firmly told herself. After all, she and Oscar and Logan were still here, and Peter was out there somewhere. She wasn’t sick. She wouldn’t _be_ sick. They would get through it together eventually, the three of them. With or without their parents, at least they were together.

“This is the end of life as we know it, isn’t it?” Oscar asked. His wavy hair fluttered in the cool breeze coming from up the mountain.

“Yes,” Charlotte replied. “Maybe even the end of the world, in a way.”

It was even more terrifying to say it out loud, and she was silent for a while. Nothing moved in the valley.

“But,” she eventually continued, “at least we’re here to face it together, and I’m glad we are.”

“Yeah.”

A little louder, she added, “Right, Logan?”

Silence.

Charlotte’s heart skipped a terrified beat before doubling its efforts in her chest. She swallowed heavily. Her fingers sought out Oscar’s, and she twined their hands together without looking.

“Logan?”


End file.
